Jackie Lawson stood in court and gently opened the collar of her blouse to show the jury the scar that circles her neck like a necklace. That scar, she testified, she got when her ex-husband, John Auchmuty, slit her throat on September 17, 1988. John had already killed her boyfriend, who had been sleeping beside her, and repeatedly shot and stabbed her. “He saw me open my eyes,” Jackie said. “He bent down in my face and he said, ‘You’re not dead yet?’ and he slit my throat.”

John admitted that he killed Arthur Hoffman, 27, and shot and stabbed Jackie, but he said he did it in a frenzied jealous rage – without premeditation. Jackie, however, told a different story. The couple’s 17-year-marriage soured in September 1987. She left and he was angry, she said. John’s first wife had also left him and he wasn’t going to let it happen again. “He told me if he ever saw me with anybody, it didn’t matter if he was a friend or not, we would be dead,” Jackie said.

Jackie said she tried to keep her romance, phone number and address from him but John, an avid gun collector, found out where she lived and drove by often. John, 52, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.